79 
'Pa 






New York State Education Department 



OUR CHILDREN, OUR SCHOOLS, AND OUR 

INDUSTRIES 



COMMISSIONER S SPECIAL THEME 
ANNUAL REPORT I908 



BY 



ANDREW S. DRAPER, LL.B. LL.D. 

Commissioner of Education 



ALBANY, N. Y. 



D4o4r-D7-35oo 



^<^ 
^ 



£3 2Q 1910 



'WA 



OUR CHILDREN, OUR SCHOOLS, AND OUR 
'^ INDUSTRIES 

^ It is putting it not a whit too strongly to say that it is quite 

apparent to all who think about it that we must have much more 
accurate and up-to-date vital statistics ; that we must have public 
records of what children there are among us, and their ages; that 
all children of school age must be more completely accounted for 
in the schools; that the compulsory school age must at least be 
extended to the completion of the elementary schools ; that provision 
must be made for public vocation or trades schools, and also for 
schools of a general character which meet the continuing needs of 
young people in the stores and shops and factories ; that these 
schools for the industrial masses must operate at times which will 
allow pupils to engage in regular employment, but employers must 
plan for the regular attendance of young employees upon the schools 
at certain hours ; that the schools must keep hold of all pupils until 
they have received a training which will fit them for some definite 
employment ; and that the different parts of a more extended school 
system must balance each other more exactly and support the 
industrial as well as the professional activities of the country. 

The recognition of the need of all this grows out of manifest 
moral, industrial, and economic conditions that are widely prevalent 
among us, and out of a growing knowledge of what other peoples, 
harder pressed and more painstaking than we, have done to meet 
the conditions which are now asserting themselves here. It grows 
out of our clearing vision that simple and balanced justice, as well 
as the progress and happiness of the people, and the strength and 
poise of the nation, alike make it necessary to give to the wage 
earning masses, and to the common industries, such equivalent as 
we can for what the present schools are doing for the wealthier 
classes and for the professional and managing vocations. 

The recognition of the need is opening the door to a decisive 
educational advance in America ; and the time seems ripe for a 
review of the reasons for it and for a serious discussion of the 
plans and arrangements for it. 

Looking backward 

In the beginning there was no thought that the common schools 
should do more than teach the " three R's," the mere elements, 
which would enable one to gain the knowledge vital to citizenship. 
Farming was the very general employment. Many of the trades 



were followed on the farm. There was no thought of leaving the 
farm. Boys were happy in the thought of having a farm and fol- 
lowing their fathers from whom they learned the business of farm- 
ing. In the towns there was a system of apprenticeship by which 
boys were bound out to tradesmen and artisans for a term of years 
to give service in return for instruction in a trade. There was no 
employment, and little schooling, for girls outside of the home. The 
girls in every home were made expert in the household arts by their 
mothers and by the ordinary needs of the home, and they were not 
unhappy about it. Few boys and no girls went to college. The 
college was the instrument of the relatively rich, and provided 
rather exclusive instruction in the higher classical and culturing 
studies. It can hardly be said to have prepared for the professions 
and certainly it did not train in professional knowledge and skill. 
There was no connecting link between the college and the common 
school, which stood for the masses. The early English system per- 
sisted as it persists in England still. They are having a row about 
it over there now, and seem likely to have a yet larger one. A 
system of academies which was really a system of fitting schools 
for the colleges, developed in the better towns. Even the academies 
connected but very little with the elementary schools. They were 
half elementary schools themselves ; the other half managed to con- 
nect with colleges and had to condescend to them. They lived on 
tuition fees and were patronized by the well-to-do who could afford 
it and were ambitious to have their children go beyond the ele- 
mentary branches. They participated in the exclusiveness of the 
colleges, but the stern need of support obliged them to adjust their 
work to the needs of all who would send pupils to them. This is 
not saying that they lacked in excellence. They did not. But they 
were essentially private institutions and they had an individuality 
of their own. They were not only wholly apart from the common 
schools ; there was much aloofness. It was an exceptional and a 
most progressive community that associated an academy with the 
common or elementary schools. Accordingly there was no educa- 
tional outlet for the children who completed the elementary schools. 
If a son of the poor got into an academy there was some shock about 
it; and if he broke into a profession it was because the fence was 
low and he had some unusual qualities in his outfit. 

This could not long be, and the public high school system came. 
It came very near supplanting the academies in the older states; 
and it kept them from ever being in the newer states. It took their 
place as colkge feeders ; the colleges came to be glad to condescend 



to the high schools also ; indeed, their work of itself developed 
many colleges. With it all, the colleges have multiplied and the 
best of them have become great universities. The public high 
school system became the strong connecting link between the ele- 
mentary schools and the colleges. Every effort was made to have 
the connections close and smooth. The road from " the kindergar- 
ten to the university " was made continuous and easy. The colleges 
and universities were broadened in their work and liberalized and 
popularized in their character. The scientific interests made a great 
fight against classical exclusiveness, and slowly got the better of the 
old Romanlike resistance. At all events, science broke in. Pro- 
fessional expertness came to have a scientific basis and came to 
require a higher scientific training. The universities came to have 
professional schools, and got the laws changed so that students 
headed for the professions found it to their advantage, or were 
absolutely required, to go to them. Mechanical and agricultural 
schools and colleges grew up, and often in association with the older 
literary colleges and universities. The ideal of a university came 
to be one that could supply the best instruction in any study. There 
was economy in producing stronger all-around scholars, and in 
training for the professions, for managerial capacity in business, 
and for leadership in public life, through grouping all manner of 
schools about the same campus. The aggregations developed mar- 
velous spirit and attractiveness. Then came the days of competi- 
tion and imitation; of fraternities, and debates; of athletics, of 
gymnasiums, and tracks, and games, and intercollegiate contests ; 
of ribbons, and songs, and bands, and mascots, and awful yelling. 
It pretty nearly set states aflame. It would be unfair to imply that 
the rivalry and the noise were all that attracted youth to high school 
and college. Far from it. They not only taught more things, and 
more things in which there was human interest, but they taught 
them in infinitely better ways. Moreover, they taught them to 
both sexes. x\ll in all, the multiplicity of actual work, and the glow 
and enthusiasm of the environment, certainly attracted the ambi- 
tious youth. There are very considerable areas in the country now, 
where every boy and every girl in the elementary schools thinks 
of the high school, and every one in the high school debates the 
matter of going to college. The stronger of both sexes feel injured 
if denied the advanced learning. 

That is not all. The influence of the teachers of all grades is 
exerted to send all of the children to the grade above, along the 
road that leads to the university. They are told of the equal rights 



of every one and of the increased resourcefulness and efficiency, 
and therefore of the better chance, which is provided by the higher 
training. Acting upon the American spirit and temperament, the 
result is quick and strong. On the whole it is well. Sometimes it is 
pathetic, for it often leads parents to sacrifice more than they ought, 
and sometimes it directs youth into places already well occupied 
and for which they have no special adaptation. It is saying noth- 
ing against the students most concerned, and nothing against the 
claims of the universities, to say that there can be no doubt about 
the fact that many get into them who would be better off in the 
end if they would put the qualities they have into other work,, when 
they are without the factors which are requisite to success in un- 
dertakings which practically exact university training. There is 
serious question about many going to college who do go. 

It ought to be seen that, in view of the spirit, the democracy, 
the political philosophy, and the temperament of the people of the 
United States, this is much more likely to be so here than in coun- 
tries where there is distinct cleavage between industrial and social 
classes, where families live in the same way for generations, and 
where all of the political philosophy, and all of the government plans 
and policies are set against one's getting above the class and the 
kind of work in which he was born. It is saying nothing against 
our temperament, and spirit, and political philosophy, to say that 
it leads a great many youth into places or kinds of work for which 
they are not best adapted. In American schools, particularly the 
secondary schools and above, every one is told that he is lacking in 
every desirable quality if he is not hitching his wagon to a star. 
That is all right enough if there could be some discrimination about 
the kind of star that it would be well for the particular individual 
to try to harness up with. The true standards of value concerning 
positions and fitness for positions are often but poorly understood. 
There are many failures through misfits. In the indiscriminate 
scramble for places which will enable one to wear fine clothes and 
live in a great house or at the clubs, some get into places they can 
not fill, many who manage to make a living in such places would 
be far happier and make a better living in other places, and many 
more lose their best chances in life by a mistaken race after a fleet- 
ing vision when substantial opportunities are actually and easily 
within their reach. 

There would be quite as much of this as we can well afford if 
the educational system did not lead so exclusively to professional 
employments and to the quasi professional positions and the man- 



aging positions in the business and industrial vocations. As it is, 
there is so much of it that it is actually making us poor. 

Nothing leads to craftsmanship 

But that is not all. Any hand work that is found in the ele- 
mentary school — and on the whole it is very little — is sustained 
on the theory that it is a desirable accomplishment, an intellectual 
quickener, rather than that all the world must work, and that work 
with the hands must be much more common and quite as reputable 
as work with the head. Instead of leading to a trade it prepares 
for the manual training high school, if there is one, and that leads 
to the technological college, if it leads anywhere, and that to one 
of the engineering professions. Nothing in the common schools 
leads to a trade. 

The manual training high schools are too elaborate, too expen- 
sive, in a way too dilettante, to lead to anything other than one 
of the industrial professions ; often they do not even prepare for 
training in one of these. They are much more like schools than 
shops, whereas they should be more like shops than schools. In 
buildings that have nothing of the appearance of a shop, they have 
machinery, tools, equipment, atmosphere, theory, and practice, 
which differentiate them widely from the shop. They are managed 
by men who are more teachers than workmen, when they should 
be managed by men who are at least quite as much workmen as 
teachers. Often the machinery and tools make an interesting show 
without being needed or effectually used, because there is not a 
skilled workm.an to use them. Many a time a principal or teacher 
pleads for an appropriation with which to buy machinery, tools, 
and other equipment, without any definite theory, or plan, or end, 
in view. If refused, he would feel outraged and become a martyr. 
If given, he studies the catalogues and sees the agents for the pur- 
pose of spending the money in ways that will look well and make 
an impression upon the people, who always love an object lesson 
and are often susceptible and superficial about industrial training. 
Real tradesmen and workmen discriminate ; and they are amused 
by what they see. There is not enough substantial result to it. I 
know very well that this is not always true, but quite as well that it 
is often true. 

It is true also that the overwhelming influence of American 
technical schools, from lowest to highest, is quite as much in 
the direction of turning out men for professional and managing 
employments as is the influence of the purely literary and sci- 



8 

entific schools. Of course it is for professional employment in one 
of the industrial professions and for managing positions in one 
of 'the leading manufacturing industries, but it is none the less 
for a professional and managing vocation. It does not train work- 
men. It is saying little against the system to say that it is one- 
sided, in the effort to bring up the other side and develop a system 
that is better balanced. 

The unskilled labor in American cities is trained but very little 
in the American schools. It is now derived very largely from the 
less favored countries of the old world. American children are 
taught that they must hold themselves above unskilled labor. It is, 
however, no uncommon thing to find young men and women in 
industrial and domestic service in this country, who were better 
trained in elementary knowledge of reading, writing, and mathe- 
matics, as well as in the simple arts which make for ordinary effi- 
ciency, before they came to this country, than the young people 
of similar age and social plane are who have always lived here. 
They are happier and of more value to the country for it. It is 
due to the fact that the elementary schools of the lands from which 
they came had much less to do than our elementary schools have, 
and were required to do it more exactly; and to the further fact 
that those schools had in mind the training of youth for work, 
rather than for professional or managing employments, or for mere 
accomplishments. It is the fact that our unskilled labor does not 
come out of our own schools, joined to the fact that the skilled labor 
that we have is so largely trained not in the schools but in a very 
haphazard way in the shops, that is disturbing the equilibrium of 
our factories, impeding our industrial productivity, and raising so 
much criticism upon the unbalanced curriculum of the schools. 

The lines in all the schools above the elementary schools, are set 
hard and fast for professional employments and for managing posi- 
tions in industrial employments, not only through the continual 
stirring of the ambitions which are buoyant in American youth, but 
also through the large provision for the literary and scientific train- 
ing which is naturally incident thereto, or is actually required by 
such employments. In the high schools, the colleges, the profes- 
sional schools that are independent as well as those related to the 
universities, in the business and commercial schools or independent 
schools of every kind, in the universities, and even in the technical 
schools of every grade, the whole scheme is set to turn out profes- 
sional men, and managers, and captains of something or other, 
rather than skilled workmen. It is so, too, in the elementary schools 



where the Hnes are set at all. From the bottom to the top of the 
school system the eye is on the school above, and the school above 
leads to a professional or a managing employment rather than to 
a trade vocation. 

If the manual training in the high schools or the separate manual 
training schools of secondary grade, or the little industrial drawing 
or other simple industrial work in the elementary schools, be ad- 
vanced in refutation of this statement, it is insisted that they do not 
refute it. The little industrial work in the elementary schools has 
been looked upon as a diversion, or as a preparation for the man- 
ual training in the high schools, and the enthusiastic advocates of 
manual training in the high schools have been content to rest their 
interest in it upon its all-around culturing and educational value, 
meaning thereby its value to intellectual virility and energy, rather 
than upon the fact that it would make a more skilled craftsman and 
therefore an individual of more character and a citizen of more 
strength in the case of the man who works by himself alone and 
not as one of an organized force, and with his hands alone and 
not through the use of a complicated machine. The technical 
schools are of course to be encouraged, but the very interests of 
capital will encourage them, and, at the most, when we think of 
their bearing upon men and women, they tend to make the human 
a part of the machine, or they lead to one of the engineering pro- 
fessions or to the captaining of workmen. From first to last, there 
has been little about the American educational system, and there is 
now little about the American industrial system to dignify and uplift 
craftsmanship, or to multiply and train the physical qualities of the 
individual man. 

Wholly apart from the one-sided tendencies of our educational 
system, the fact is that if any mechanical tendencies which a child 
may have are neglected until he gets into the high school, they are 
never likely to come to much anyway. And the further fact is that 
so long as manual training has to be dominated by the method and 
atmosphere of the school rather than of the shop, and managed by 
one whom the capable workman regards as a sort of dilettante 
theorist rather than by one who likes to wear a blouse and overalls and 
actually does fine work with his hands, it is not likely to stimulate 
the best character in workmanship nor to turn out any considerable 
number of justly self-satisfied and abundantly desirable workmen. 
It may in part fit men for the work of the engineering colleges, 
which may make engineers of some of them. And in some of the 
engineers there will develop the qualities which will make for leader- 



lO 

ship in great constructive enterprises. But it all leads away from 
independent craftsmanship. In a general way the same thing is 
true — perhaps more is true — of the commercial courses and the com- 
mercial schools. Doubtless they inspire some and aid a few to enlarge 
their efficiency, but it is surely within the fact to say that the ratio 
of captains, or even of finished business men, they produce is, from 
an educational standpoint, discouragingly small. 

In saying this it is not intended to urge that the literary, and 
professional, and commercial, and technical schools of all grades are 
worthless or not worth all they have cost. On the contrary, they 
each minister to a class and are, generally speaking, invaluable. It 
is only intended to urge that they are one-sided, that they meet 
the needs of the situation only partially, and that their theories and 
plans and methods are such that it is impossible for them to meet 
it completely. They are so ample in numbers and good in character 
that they are turning out quite all of the professionals and captains 
that the country requires, and are beginning to do it quite as thor- 
oughly as is being done anywhere in the world. Not much beyond 
the natural growth of these institutions seems now to be necessary 
to the professional life of the country. This can not be said as to the 
factors which contribute to the industrial life of the nation. 

Nor is it intended to imply that the public schools are not doing 
the work they are arranged to do, in an efficient manner. On the 
contrary, again, the buildings average far better, the equipment is 
many times better, the courses are more complete and more logically 
related, and the teachers much better prepared and certainly no less 
conscientious, than ever before in the history of the country. It is 
only suggesting that, in the interest of the common people and of 
the country, the kinds of schools must be multiplied, that the educa- 
tional schem.e must be broadened, that attendance upon schools 
must be longer and more universal, and that the work of the lower 
schools must have much more bearing upon the labor of the masses. 

Reflections upon this subject have led me to seek exact informa- 
tion, and I confess, with some humiliation, that it surprises me. The 
situation is even worse than I supposed. I have assumed that 
practically all of the children who do not go to the high schools do 
finish the elementary schools. That is not the fact. It is clear that 
the larger number do not finish the elementary schools by the time 
they are fourteen, the age at which the law says they may leave 
school to go to work, and that this provision of the law very com- 
monly leads parents to think that the time has come for them to go 
to work, notwithstanding the fact that they have not finished the 



II 

lower schools, and notwithstanding the other fact that there is little 
renumerative v/ork which they can do. There is often more of a 
break in attendance between the fifth and sixth grades of the 
elementary schools than there is between the elementary schools and 
the secondary schools. 

The following table will show the attendance in the elementary- 
schools, by grades, in the cities named, commencing in 1899 with 
the class that finished the course in 1907. The cities are not se- 
lected. The list includes all cities of the State from which the data 
could be obtained without labor which was not insisted upon. There 
is no reason to suppose that the omitted cities would materially 
change the deductions. 



12 



^ 



0\ H CO '^vo ov >o N N t^ moo o^oo \o t >o i/^ t^oo o\ W J^ H 

0»<7iC5P>^«<0H00VD^OPie)HN'tNWHf)>nM0^ 
N M ION 10C<5^>0P) lOtOTft« TfCO^fO'-' >OfOfOtOt*3N 



mwC^M CSH MH MH HHNCi HH M H 



^ 



lO U1 CO r^vo N 'I' 0\ l>.00 t^ Tf ON t^OO 



(>•<?•* 00 



w woOvO O '^OvO ON'^N W fOfOH t~.0\0\000 O lOOO O 0\ 



fOt^rO"^fOOO H ■*« lO^O P) •^ f'OO 00 -t OnO lO fO h O O 
t^\0 ■^ •^00 r^ lOOO w mD 00 t^ ■^mD 00 O "^f looO O fo lo w t^ t^ 

InHOW COH P)K C)W MC<fOM MNHVOHM 



^ 



C) \0 O lO "^OO -^ M N t^ lO ^ TT lOOO H Ov •'fOO >O00 t^ lO 

\0 vO M CO CO On c3\ r^oO 00 <M O lO mvo h M t~ looO O ro fO t^ fO 
IT) lo t^ oovO t »o to •^O r^OO O ■* >o ■^NO «o CO »o<5 •^ Tl- t ■'t 



OvO 00 CO J~- ^ Ov fOOO 00 t-» 0\ 'it lO •^OO O N CO t~ w O t^vO to 
00 (MNOOOOO WOO ONlOTfHO f^OO O M J> t^ 10\0 00 W M •^ 0\ 
OnNONH •^H WHH'I-M NMCOCOMHNHt^HO 



M 0\ <0 "100 \0 OOt^'^CTv'^co'-i'O COO H 1-1 00 H 

0~^ lo O CO M N N 00 ■^OO OOOOWMrj-ioOH 0\\o 0) rf r^ M 0\ 

t~vO 00 to lO t^\0 to t^ t^oo t^ tOMD •^ r»vO ■'t t^ l>.\o 't lo t 

rr M p) 00 >ooo 00 lo'tiorfioooo coocom o o\coi^h o\co 

N ■tt^MOO fOtO HVO WVO ONONCOtH O H H CO t^OO lo CO 
COMt^M tNl-lCOHHTt-H MMTTtNOCOHOOl-lCO 



^ 



lOVO vO H N 00 H N M fOVD H 



NOOfOP) CO OnhtTON 



OOO t^io<T»OJ>M00 f0>O too OOvO O O Nt^tN coONt^Ov 
cowo\OHcoOOvNOO<NOwcoi^twi-i t^vo t On N 0\ t^ 
HCOtfOwtOro coi-i'-itNHCScottWMcOHHHco 



^ 



H 0\ r^OO NO cot^NtHCOONNWcoONCO tNO to 

t~ lO f~ tNO M <0 On t IH O ON ONOO N too H >O00 nO m tNO On 
NO 00 OnOO 00 r~ On lO l^ ON !>• t-00 NO 00 t^OO t^OO On t- t^ «OnO >0 



CO c^ M M ONOO tNO OnOO conO l>. On O 00 On tONO w w t^ O N « 
00 t OnnO h O OnOnOnOnw h cof< O O mnqnOOO tOONioO O 
Hcot^ti-tNON cowMtWi-tcottOtcONfOHMNt 



1^00 HWfONH HNOwt OnoO too NO t On t t OvOO nO 



^ 



co*~t~-tOONcotONONCO>00 cot^tOtON cOOnO t^OO w 00 N 
hhconnnOOn lONO « CO t w N J>00 OnhoOnO O tt^l> 

NCOONtHNOCO COHMtNl-ICOttttOCONMMt 



^ 



OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO O O OOOOOOOO 

ooooooooooooooooooooooooo 

MMMHHHHHHWMHHHHHHIHWHHHHMH 



to N t^ t r^OO NO P) NO l^ w tNO 0>P< O OnWnonO P)nO OnnO 00 
NO O cotcOfOHNO cohnO WnooOnO lOOO iOOOONOt^coOl> 
t^tONtOHOO CO" tON HIOM H COtO tONO t C< t N ON CONO 






o 



G U 

I" "1^ „, 

X! to <U 4) 

3 Ch o c ■ 
Oa)<u^o<i^oo 



d r- W • F tJ «^ 



13 

The totals and percentages are as follows : 

GRADE ' NUMBER OF PUPILS PER CENT 

First 21 410 100 

Second 17 524 82 

Third 17 028 79 

Fourth 15 918 74 

Fifth 14 395 • • 67 

Sixth 12 464 58 

Seventh 10 152 , 47 

Eighth 8517 40 

The attendance by years in New York State high schools has some 
bearing upon our discussion. In the present year it is as follows : 

PER CENT OF ALL 

First year pupils 39 122 45 

Second year pupils 25 145 29 

Third year pupils 14 474 16 

Fourth year pupils 8 560 10 

Unclassified pupils i 769 



Total 89 070 

Boys, 37,429; girls, 51,641; graduates in 1907, boys 2424, girls 
6793- 

It is interesting to know what the corresponding figures are for 
the United States. For the year 1904-5, the last at hand, the total 
attendance upon high schools in the United States was 876,050. The 
percentage by years was, first year 43^ ; second year 2(iio ; third year 
18^; and fourth year 13;^. 

I confess that it startles me to find that certainly not more than 
two fifths and undoubtedly not more than one third of the children 
who enter our elementary schools ever finish them, and that not 
one half of them go beyond the fifth or sixth grade. 

It is hardly less surprising to find that only about one third of 
the pupils who go to the high schools remain beyond the second 
year, and that only about one sixth of those who enter remain to 
graduate. 

It all indicates that the lives of children are being wasted, that 
there is a sad lack of definite aim and purpose about it all, and that 
our educational plans do not rationally meet our conditions. 



14 

Neither schools nor work for children 

As the schools have developed on the literary, scientific, and pro- 
fessional sides, the indenturing system has practically disappeared. 
Few boys are now apprenticed to a trade. Indeed, many of the 
trades have either disappeared, or so changed as to render the ap- 
prenticeship system impracticable. The increase of machinery, 
which does the work of many men, has led the older workmen who 
work with their hands to resist the training of boys for their work 
in order to avoid more competition in their work than is imperative. 
It is even true that there are many less apprentices in the trades than 
the rules of the labor organizations approve. This leads to a short- 
age of skilled workmen, and to the complaint by manufacturers that 
they can not get competent workmen. People also complain that 
the schools do not fit children for any ordinary duties in the stores 
and offices and factories. It also keeps children from getting work 
of any kind when they leave the elementary schools. If they get 
work it amounts to little, and too often leads to nothing. All of the 
conditions taken together almost force children to keep on in the 
school system and go on toward the professional and managing vo- 
cations which are more than full, and for which they lack adapta- 
tion; or else be out of any kind of work for several years. As a 
fact, masses of them are out of school and also out of work for a 
long time, if not for all time. 

I shall not leave the entire responsibility for this either upon the 
parents or the children. Some of it must fall upon the provisions of 
the law ; some of it is chargeable to the inefficiency with which school 
attendance and child labor laws are enforced; and some of it must 
be attributed to the overloading and the slowness of the schools, and 
in some measure to the want of alertness and energy in school ad- 
ministration. Parents face hard problems concerning the family 
support, and are much influenced by the fancies of the children. 
The children can not know what leaving school means to them. 
Neither the control of the home nor that of the school over chil- 
dren is what it once was. Both homes and schools are awfully 
profligate of boys and girls. The break comes at a critical time in 
the physical life of the child; the time when he most needs con- 
trol, restraint, guidance, and cheer; the time when he most needs 
to be occupied, to be shown the need and the method of applica- 
tion to serious work, and to be directed into some work, never mind 
what it is, which he can do completely and be happy in the doing of 
it. Instead of that he is often running wild at this time ; frequently 



15 

impolite, mannerless, and sometimes impertinent; forgetting the 
things of value he has learned, learning what he ought not to know 
until he is older, if at all, and developing uncontrollable, unambi- 
tious, and inefficient, if not vicious, qualities, which are more than 
likely to preclude him from ever becoming very much of a man. 

Does some one say that this is too highly colored, that it is not 
true of many, and that it is pessimistic? Rational optimism never 
shuts its eyes to the truth. What I have just said is literally and 
completely true of more than half the children of our people. And 
if true of only a much smaller number, it would be well worth 
my attention and my protest. 

There is fault in the law. It should require that children finish 
the elementary schools, or at least remain in them or in a trades 
school to the end of their sixteenth year, before they go to work. 
It might well gather them into the schools before the eighth year, 
and it might well require us to make attendance more regular and 
more resultful. 

There is fault, much fault, in the plan and in the work of the 
schools. If they do not have too many studies — about which I am 
not without skepticism — they certainly consume too m.uch time upon 
some of the studies they do have. There are too many grades of 
books in the same study. The thing is drawn out regardless of time 
and, almost, of interest, and certainly of educational efficiency. The 
day of reckoning is hardly anticipated at all. For example, there is 
almost enough time of the child put upon such a study as geography 
to enable him to learn a foreign language, when the fact is he will 
learn all the geography it will ever be necessary for him to know 
in a few minutes when it is desirable for him to know it. 

But that is not all, and perhaps it is not the most. There is alto- 
gether too much so called " psychological science," too much fanci- 
ful exploitation and illustration, too much method and dress parade 
in the teaching. The cold and sad fact is that men and women 
whose knowledge of physiology is utterly repudiated by our experts 
in physiology and whose reasoning is ridiculed by our leaders in 
logic, are assuming with entire confidence to teach physiological psy- 
chology in the schools. If the professors in the colleges enjoy it, 
and their students will stand it, perhaps we can let it alone, for they 
have the means of correcting it within their own number, but it 
is high time to protest when primary teachers are led to believe that 
they are bound to know all about this mass of superficial stuff and 
that they must inflict it upon the children in the elementary schools. 

The reason why so many children leave the elementary schools 



i6 

before finishing the course is not so much because their parents 
need their labor, or because the law says they may, as because there 
is too much wandering around in tall grass, too much time wasted 
in the merely incidental accompaniments of schools and of teaching. 
It is because the work of the schools is behind the ages of the chil- 
dren. It is because the work which we set to be done by a woman 
teacher in the fifth grade and the way we expect her to do it can no 
longer be tolerated by a boy passing into his fifteenth year. 

The hard fact is that we ought to get children well started earlier 
and push them along from one grade to another more rapidly than 
we do, and I entertain no doubt but that we ought to do the work 
we do in the elementary grades, or such parts of it as are funda- 
mental and potential, in at least one less year than we take for it. 
In any event, if our elementary school system is to continue to do 
about the work which is now assigned to it, it must make a point 
of getting children to the end of it by the time they finish their four- 
teenth year. It is monstrous that two thirds of the children of the 
State do not go through the elementary schools. If great numbers 
of them do it at all they will have to do it by the time they are fif- 
teen. Long before that their minds should be directed toward 
definite work which they may do, and may like to do ; and when that 
time comes, they should be put to doing it and helped to do it ex- 
actly and well, to the end that they may have some pleasure in it. 
To that we will now direct our attention. 

Good citizenship dependent upon workmen 

I hesitate not a moment in saying that good citizenship and the 
thrift and morals of the country are quite as dependent upon the 
mass being trained to skilled work with their hands, as upon a class 
being advanced in scientific knowledge or in professional accom- 
plishments. The greatness of the nation is contingent upon bring- 
ing the truths which science unlocks to the life, and particularly to 
the vocations, of the people. But that can be done only where a 
people is inured to work; where they have, and love, vocations. 

The successful workman is a happier man and a more reliable 
citizen, a much larger factor in giving strength and balance to his 
country, than the unsuccessful or the only half successful profes- 
sional man. It adds little to one's value as a civic unit that he be 
elaborately trained in theory, or in science, or in skill, if his training 
has been at the cost of his balance; if he knows one thing at the 
expense of many other things which every good citizen is bound to 



17 

know, and of that balance which every good citizen is bound to 
have. And it makes little addition to the strength of a nation that 
some of the people have the highest learning, even that the advanced 
schools and the professional life are overcrowded, if the masses 
have not love and capacity for growing things and for making 
things. 

The scientific habit and the zeal for exact knowledge and the 
superior work of the gymnasia and of the universities, caused Ger- 
many, thirty years ago, first to note the educational difficulty which 
we are beginning to realize. It was this which led the young Em- 
peror to say to the Berlin Conference on Secondary Education, in 
1890, " The course of training in our schools is defective in many 
ways. The chief reason is that since the year 1870 the classical 
philologists have laid the chief emphasis on the subject-matter of 
instruction, on learning and knowing, not on the formation of char- 
acter and the actual needs of life. . . The demands made in the 
examinations show that less stress is laid on practical ability than 
on knowledge. The underlying principle of this is that the scholar 
must, above all things, know as much as possible ; whether that 
knowledge fits the actual needs of after life is a secondary considera- 
tion. . . The chief defect in our schools is the lack of a na- 
tional basis for the instruction. . . Our schools have undertaken a 
task beyond human strength, and have, in my opinion, caused an 
overproduction of highly educated people, — more than the nation 
can hear.'' 

There will be those in this country who will say that this was 
the expression of royal exclusiveness, even of royal apprehension 
lest the liberal education of the masses should make for demo- 
cratic rather than monarchical reign. It is the fact, on the other 
hand, that the Emperor was obliged to withstand that objection, 
raised in the inner circles of his court, because no less an authority 
than Prince Hohenlohe, the Imperial Chancellor, in the memoirs 
just published to the annoyance of the Emperor, reveals opposition 
by the nobility on the ground that to change the labor of the 
German people, in whole or in part, from agrarian to manufacturing 
industries was to promote democracy and endanger monarchism. 
Of course the Emperor had no thought of inviting a tide which 
would engulf his throne. He was not lessening liberal learning, 
but he was trying to bring industrial power into vital relations, and 
therefore into equilibrium, with it. He was enlarging the material, 
and therefore the military, strength of an empire which is encom- 
passed by rivals, if not foes, on every side. It is much to his 



i8 

credit that he was doing it with discrimination and without fear; 
that he could foresee the imperative basis of German power; and 
that he was able to establish that balance between material and 
intellectual wealth which would enlarge, and has enlarged, both in 
the German Empire. 

Lack of industrial training in American schools 

There is nothing which now appeals to the popular fancy in 
America so much as " industrial training." The newspapers are 
full of it. Every public audience responds to it quickly. The 
authorities of charitable and penal institutions are trying to install 
it. The school boards are all in favor of it but hardly know how 
to accomplish it. They do something about it because they dare 
not do nothing. They do not do much because the pedagogical 
mind is not very clear about policies and plans, because the pro- 
fessional and capitalistic classes are too often uninformed, un- 
interested, or selfish about it, and because the labor organizations 
are skeptical about its ultimate effect upon the scale of wages. The 
confusion and uncertainty are widespread. 

Nor is this all. Up to this time the American spirit has made 
" industrial training " a very different thing in the American mind 
from what it is in the minds of other peoples. In our mind it is, 
in part, culturing, an aid to industrial or engineering leadership, 
something that will lift one to a place above that of the ordinary 
workman. Accordingly, we have installed it at the top of the 
educational system and left the bottom to take care of itself. In 
the minds of other peoples it means craftsmanship, the training of 
the masses in good workmanship. Accordingly, they have in- 
trenched it at the bottom of their educational systems and left the 
top to meet its own needs. The top is more able than the bottom 
to get what it needs. Whatever the motive or the logic, Germany 
is educationally more democratic than the United States. 

We have never to any extent undertaken to provide vocational 
training, or even any direct preparation for craftsmanship, in the 
public elementary schools. Here and there in the cities, kinder- 
gartens, or a mixture of kindergartens and the first primary grades, 
have been established. It was done only after private kindergartens 
had proved their worth. There have been movements for the ex- 
tension of both free-hand and mechanical drawing, on the ground 
that we must give art its opportunity and prepare for the manual 
training work in the high schools. In very few places have we gone 
farther in the lower schools. 



19 

In the city of Cleveland, fifteen years ago, some phases of me- 
chanical and domestic work were introduced into every grade of 
all of the elementary schools, and I am informed that it still con- 
tinues. In the four lower grades it consisted of sand molding, 
clay modeling, paper folding, outlining with the needle, construc- 
tion through the use of cardboard, and all phases of elementary 
drawing. The aesthetic taste was incidentally commenced to be 
developed by combining colors and arranging objects. In the fifth 
and sixth grades simple geometrical forms, derived from the study 
of paper and clay forms in the grades below, and cut in wood by 
the use of the knife, rule, square, compass, and pencil, were given 
the boys, and simple needle work, involving the principal stitches 
in plain sewing, was given the girls. This was done by the class 
at their desks, under the direction of the class teachers after they 
had been instructed at grade meetings by the special supervisor. 
In the seventh and eighth grades the boys were given light bench 
work, and the girls plain cooking, arid for that purpose were sent 
from each of several buildings at appointed times to central rooms 
specially prepared, and to teachers specially trained for the purpose. 
The system operated smoothly and was enthusiastically received in 
the schools and in the city. There was nothing new about the work 
itself, but the adaptation of it to all the grades in a large city 
system was doubtless unprecedented in the country. It certainly 
attracted much discussion and comment, and some official and peda- 
gogical protest. At the National Meeting of Superintendents at 
Richmond, Virginia in 1894, after a supervisor in the Cleveland 
schools had presented a paper describing it, one of the most ex- 
perienced and progressive school men of the country went directly 
over to the apprehensive and subdued superintendent from Cleve- 
land and asked " Is there anything you don't propose to do in the 
primary schools ? " But the industrial conditions in Cleveland were 
unusually favorable to it. Moreover, it taught no trade. It led 
to no particular craft. It was more in the direction of general 
accomplishments than of specific efficiency and skill. This much 
was true of it, however; it formed some basis for the work of 
trades schools, as well as of manual training schools and tech- 
nological colleges. Yet the skepticism expressed at Richmond has 
been widely and well intrenched. Even the very simple phases of 
preparation for industrial vocations which aroused it have found 
little more than theoretical and halting acceptance in American 
elementary schools. 



20 

If there is an apparent inconsistency between my demand that 
the present work in the elementary schools shall be lessened by 
elimination or concentration and my suggestion that the elements of 
industrial training be added, let me say that the things of which 
I complain are continuing, are present every day in the week and 
in every hour of the day. They are not only not important; they 
are a positive hindrance to the expeditious and exact training of 
the powers of the child. The things that I propose would oc- 
cupy at the most only a couple of hours in the week; they are 
really diversions; they recognize the pedagogical principle that it 
is quite as important for the child to do as to think; and they 
lead toward efficiency in a condition which he is likely to occupy, 
and will be an advantage to him no matter what his circumstances 
in life. The taking out of what I propose to eliminate and the 
putting in of what I propose to include will both be to the intel- 
lectual and dexterous advantage of the child. There is no real 
inconsistency. And if the one thing is done there will be abundant 
room for the other. 

Above the elementary schools, industrial and vocational work 
has been given larger opportunity. In a great many of the high 
schools there are courses in manual training, and in all of the larger 
city systems there are manual training high schools. No one claims 
that this has much bearing upon craftsmanship. At the most it 
can relate to only a small part of the children who go to the public 
schools, and as to them, it is for intellectual quickening or prepara- 
tion for one of the engineering professions, or for the training of 
men to direct other men who work with their hands. 

In recent years some special vocations, like stenography and type- 
writing, and other things relating to office work, have found their 
way into the public secondary schools. Three or four public vo- 
cational schools, of secondary grade, supported by a municipality 
or partly by the municipality and partly by the state, like the Wash- 
ington Irving High School of New York City, The Textile School of 
Lowell, Mass., the Central High School of Commerce of Philadel- 
phia, and some of the evening high schools of Buffalo and New 
York City have been established. But their very names prove 
how far they are from the training of the masses in workmanship. 

Many of the universities, particularly the land grant and tax 
supported universities, have great engineering schools, but their 
work all leads essentially to the industrial professions rather than 
to craftsmanship, although doubtless the sense which they drill 
into the heads of their students concerning the honor which belongs 



21 

to the man who can do fine work with his hands, and likes to work 
in a blouse, is adding somewhat to the attractiveness of skilled labor. 

Private business schools which, for profit, have undertaken to 
train pupils in simpler mathematics, bookkeeping, stenography, 
business forms, and the like, have been a great help to many for 
a long time. Many of the Young Men's Christian Associations 
have established schools of this kind, and some of them are be- 
ginning to include trades schools in their scheme. Several cor- 
respondence schools have attracted thousands of pupils and de- 
veloped the existence of a widespread desire for self-improvement. 
In New York City one company of financiers, merchants, and 
real estate men, and another company interested in house furnish- 
ing and decorating, and yet another interested in the building trades, 
and still another interested in the automobile trade, and doubtless 
many others, have set up schools or lecture courses for the special 
training of competent assistants. Some of the great manufacturing 
or construction companies, like the Westinghouse Electric Company 
and the Baldwin Locomotive Works, have set up schools of their 
own. They have prepared schoolrooms, employed efficient teachers,, 
and laid out very considerable courses of work in order to train 
men for their own service. They take young men on trial for 
perhaps six months, and if they show some proficiency and aptitude, 
and will bind themselves to remain and follow their work for a 
term of three or four years, they enter into written agreement with 
them to that effect, and during the period they work in the shop 
they are under instruction and receive moderate pay upon a schedule, 
which gradually advances as the apprentice may be assumed to 
grow in competency. 

But all this, if it illustrates anything, shows the general lack of 
preparation for vocational employments in the United States, and 
the disconnected, very often unsubstantial, and ordinarily self- 
interested and sporadic movements to overcome the difficulty, rather 
than any general plan for meeting a very wide and very imperative 
demand. 

I have been speaking in a general way of vocations common to 
boys, but the situation is no less urgent as to girls. While the old 
apprenticeship system has been gradually disappearing, and boys 
have been going from the country to the cities, and machinery has 
wrought such changes in men's work, the old-fashioned kind of 
housekeeping which trained girls to expertness in the household 
arts, has been disappearing also. Vocations which were formerly 
open only to boys are now open to girls, with the result that by the 



22 

tens of thousands they know nothing of good home making, and, 
worse than that, they are proud of it. It is bad enough for an 
attractive young miss to be unable to make a loaf of bread, or 
broil a steak, or use a needle; the limit is passed when a college 
makes her such a little idiot as to think it is smart to boast of it. 
The schools are not so responsible for this as the mothers are, 
but perhaps the schools ought to join with the mothers in the effort 
to cure it. And aside from the employments of women relating 
to the household, the business employments which women are enter- 
ing in such great numbers may well concern the schools. And 
moreover, the principle that all educational opportunities, or their 
unquestioned equivalents, are to be extended to girls and boys alike, 
is to have acceptance and expression in all parts of this country. 

Therefore, we may sum up this phase of our theme thus : The 
public school system has had but little thought of craftsmanship, 
by which the greater part of the people must live, and upon which 
the moral and intellectual health of the people and the greatness 
of the nation must depend; the work of the schools has led almost 
exclusively to mere culture and to professional and managing em- 
ployments ; the efficiency of the teachers has been measured by the 
number and training of the pupils they sent to the grade above, and 
thus the pupils have been led to think that the grade above was 
th^ goal of life ; and the grade above has led to literature and the 
sciences and to professional and managing vocations. This has 
taken a great many into situations for which they were not adapted, 
and has overstocked the professions ; has resulted in too many 
partial or complete failures, and is operating both to the industrial 
and intellectual disadvantage of the country. 

American aims 

It is clear enough that we will not only have to reckon with 
German industrialism, but also that we may learn much to our 
advantage from the German system of education, and I shall there- 
fore not hesitate to draw as many comparisons with Germany as I 
may. We must distinguish a difference in aim and purpose, how- 
ever, and can do it none too clearly, nor too soon. It is a difference 
which is of national concern to us. The German purpose seems 
to be to train boys and girls so as to add to the physical and 
therefore to the military strength of the empire. The American pur- 
pose is to train boys and girls so as to enable them to make the 
most of themselves. Our ideal seems the noblest, but as yet the 
Germans are widely and more uniformly realizing their ideal better 



23 

than we are ours. Of course, in the one case, the training for 
national strength incidentally makes useful and potential men and 
women; and of course, in the other case, training for the highest 
possibilities of manhood and womanhood incidentally makes for the 
greatness of the nation. But a national policy which gives every 
man his opportunity ought to make a larger percentage of pro- 
ductive, and therefore happier men, and in the end, an infinitely 
more versatile and potential people, if it can be carried out in ways 
which will not give youth a beclouded outlook and lead to too 
many misfits between adaptation and opportunity. 

It can not have escaped our observation, moreover, that one 
who starts out for a professional or managing vocation and fails, 
never takes up craftsmanship afterwards and succeeds ; while a 
good craftsman sometimes develops into an excellent professional 
man, and very often develops into the very best kind of a manager 
of his craft. And it is worse than idle, because it is justly pro- 
ductive of false standards and of ill-will, to put one to managing 
any business or any work, who has not learned the business by 
exploiting its processes from the bottom up to the place which he 
has come to occupy. Right there is one of the essential weaknesses 
of our American business life. Through our ambitions, through 
a rather hazy notion that we can hold any place we can get into, 
and do anything we can get a chance to do, through fortune or 
favoritism coupled with a fallacious logic about preparation, men 
get into positions where they exercise control over other men who 
really understand the details of the craft or the business better 
than their overseers do. It all illustrates the vital need of broader 
training for craftsmanship at the foundations of the craft and in 
the early years of the youth's life, if all are to have an equal 
chance, and if boys are not to advance to pitfalls because handi- 
capped with superficiality. 

In this connection it may be truly said that in the State of New 
York there is now less difficulty about the constitution of the pro- 
fessions than about organized commercial or industrial effective- 
ness. No one can get into the professions of law or medicine 
without four years in the secondary school, four more in the pro- 
fessional school, a professional degree from an institution author- 
ized to confer it, and passing the State professional examination ; 
while one can, and often does, get to a high position in a bank, or 
a department store, or a factory, or a railroad, without any edu- 
cational requirements or any practical experience; and if he has 
dabbled in economics, the theory of accounts, and the like, in college. 



24 

under a professor who never had any practical experience, and 
never accomplished anything in business, he is deemed to be 
specially prepared to manage the v^hole thing. It illustrates again 
the fallacy of our standards and the readiness with which American 
spirit and ambition is permitted to start at the top, when it should 
be required to start at the bottom, of great businesses. It explains 
also the cause of so many misfits, accidents and failures. 

But on the other hand, it should not lead us to overlook the fact 
that mere experience without the study of fundamental principles, 
and a knowledge of the history of related subjects, is not so very 
much better. One course makes for conceited superficiality, and 
the other for conceited narrowness. There is small difference. 
The true course, if we are to provide the best possible training, is 
through practical experience associated with scholastic and scientific 
training, through the association of real business with the work of 
the schools. If we are to do it for some people, and would be just, 
we must do it for all people. 

What are we to do? 

While the schools are providing every conceivable kind of in- 
struction for the head workers, the hand workers leave instruction 
altogether when they leave the elementary schools, and that is 
commonly before they are prepared for work or are mature enough 
to plan for themselves. What little has been done for these has been 
isolated and unsystematic, and done by private enterprise. Thus 
the public school system is one-sided, — unjust to the greater num- 
ber and inefficient in meeting an overwhelming phase of the na- 
tion's educational need. To be consistent we must do less for the 
head workers, or more for the hand workers. We will not go back. 
All, not some, education is a passion in America. We will go 
forward. 

But just how? It is a large matter. It means much more ex- 
pense — but that is the least of it. It involves a large new chapter 
in our educational theory, a serious study of other educational 
systems, radical changes in schoolhouses and courses, the training 
of a different class of teachers. Before that can be commenced, 
or while it is being done, there will have to be much discussion, a 
great deal of missionary work, a consolidation of sentiment, and 
many new laws. The people of the schools may well have a plan, 
and one that is well fortified by theory and by fact, if they can. 

It is but just to ourselves to say that the problem seems less 
difficult in other countries because the social cleavage is more dis- 



^5 

tinct, children expect to continue upon the plane in which they 
were born, and the masses expect to work with their hands. More- 
over, the governments are beginning to see that the strength of 
the nation depends upon training workmen, and the outlook of the 
government settles things. We do not worry about the strength 
of the United States. We take that for granted. We are for 
giving every one his chance, and for helping every one to make the 
most of himself. The course of other nations leaves out individual 
possibilities. It cares little for the individual as such. It neither 
reckons with nor promotes such an ambitious, buoyant, confident, 
aggressive national temperament as is common in the United States. 
Nevertheless, our course is producing a temperament which is 
top-heavy with self-satisfaction, and doubtless needs more ballast 
in the hold. We would not lose our optimistic temperament if 
we could: we will restore the balance. 

If we compare with Germany we shall do it with the best of them 
so far as training for hand industry is concerned. There is no 
other great nation where education is at once so scientific, so bal- 
anced, so effective, and so free — scientific through research and 
the habit of taking pains — balanced because the educational system 
has come to be a pyramid with industrialism at its base — effective 
because the habit of sending children to school with regularity is 
universal — and free through the clear appreciation of the fact 
that the arbitrary power of the state is entirely consistent with the 
purest democracy in learning. 

England has trades schools of all kinds and in great numbers. 
But England has no continuing, consistent, and coherent system of 
schools, beginning in the street and leading either to a profession 
or to a trade, and offering the opportunity of selection at some 
definite point upon the road. The aristocracy prepare for exclusive 
and literary colleges in private and exclusive schools. The children 
of the masses have to go to elementary schools which are not free 
in the sense that our schools are free: they get a very excellent 
training in elementary English : if they go farther they finish in 
trades schools that are more shoppish than schoolish, and possibly 
the better for it. But the lines are arbitrary and hard : there is 
little individualism and no choice. English education has a hard 
time getting over the idea that, without regard to the personal 
equation, some men are to rule and others are to serve ; that the 
English school above the elementary must train the English " gen- 
tleman ;" and that the elementary school must train the child of 
the masses in ways that will make it clear to him that his business 
in life is to serve. 



26 

One of the most illuminating members of the English Educational 
Commission, which recently visited this country under the patronage 
of Mr Alfred Mosely, said in his report that the difficulty with 
the English elementary schools was that pupils left them without 
any desire to learn anything more. The social cleavage takes hold 
at the very beginning in the schools, there is no system of middle 
schools and therefore no connection between the higher and the 
lower schools, and the lines are so rigid that they hinder the best 
results in both the upper and the nether classes. The English 
nobleman has no thought of permitting his personal comfort and 
his political control to be disturbed by allowing the " serving classes " 
to know too much; and the English nobleman will come to be less 
a nobleman, and the British nation will come to be, relatively speak- 
ing, less a power, unless there is a radical change about it. 

France began the systematic training of hand workers long years 
ago, and the result is quickly apparent in the trades, industries, 
and arts of the French people. There are hundreds of trades schools 
in Paris and thousands throughout France. They are highly effi- 
cient; they turn out artists and craftsmen of the very first order; 
it is apparently very easy for France to make a most attractive 
exhibit in the international expositions. But it does seem as though 
the system is both arbitrary and narrow. It is so absolutely di- 
rected from the center, so oppressed with ministerial regulation, 
so oppressed with apprehension about a real democratic advance, 
that it develops mere craftsmen and artists, rather than free, all- 
around men and women. 

Practically all of the children of Germany, boys and girls, rich 
and poor, high and low, up to about their fourteenth year, go to 
elementary schools, established, supported, and directed by the state. 
The teacher is a professional, the course exact, the attendance uni- 
versal, and the expectations of the state are very completely realized. 
The idea does not yet prevail that girls should go beyond the 
secondary schools. At about ten years of age the boys and their 
parents are expected to determine whether they will fit for a trade 
or a profession. If for a trade, they go at fourteen either to a 
shop as an apprentice, or to a trades school. If for a profession, 
they go to a " gymnasium," which is a school of two kinds, of which 
one is more literary and classical and one more scientific than the 
other, and the boy takes one or the other according to the profession 
he has in mind. He enters the gymnasium at ten or eleven and 
gets out at nineteen or twenty, and then has been carried to about 
the middle of our college course. 



27 

The secondary schools separate again into schools which train 
for the literary and the scientific professions on one side, and for 
the commercial and technological professions on the other, while 
the lower trades schools lead straight to manual workmanship. 
Following the secondary commercial and technical schools we find 
them again branching into what may be called the industrial pro- 
fessions, which involve a masterful knowledge of the finest ma- 
terials, the finest workmanship, and the finest completed goods; the 
commercial schools, which involve a like masterful knowledge of 
the ways to develop and manage trade ; and the engineering schools, 
which involve an equally masterful knowledge of the construction 
of public works. And there is no difficulty in keeping along these 
industrial lines until one finds himself in the universities or the 
highest technical schools, where the world knowledge of the subject 
is present, and one can get to the very mountain peaks if he has 
strength, endurance, and persistence which are equal to the under- 
taking. 

Our concern just now is with the primary and trades schools. 
There is some classification of pupils, even in the primary schools, 
according to the means of the parents, for tuition is exacted and 
it is larger for some studies than for others, and the instruction 
from the beginning has some reference to the situation and purposes 
in life of the pupils. There is little reason to doubt, however, 
that the instruction for all pupils is equally exact and painstaking, 
or that the spirit is exceedingly democratic, and that all pupils have 
equal opportunities to perfect themselves in the business which they 
elect to follow. 

The children who have remained in the primary schools, thereby 
practically signifying their purpose to become what, for clearness 
and convenience, I designate by the term " wage earners " and who 
finish at about fourteen, then go to " continuation schools," which 
are of many kinds. The greater part teach the trades. These 
schools do not take the whole time of the child, but perhaps eight 
or ten hours each week, often in the evenings, and commonly so 
distributed as not to interfere with other regular employment. At- 
tendance at the continuation or trades schools is compulsory, and 
employers are required to so arrange matters that employees may 
attend them. 

As I am not attempting a description of the German system of 
schools I shall go no farther except as to trades schools, but it must 
already be appreciated that German schools are provided for every 
conceivable purpose in life, that nothing excuses from attendance, 



28 

and that the schools keep possession of the child up to the sixteenth 
or seventeenth year. Beyond this it must now be seen that the 
overwhehning idea is that those who will make good craftsmen 
shall not be encouraged to make poor professional men, or forced 
to attempt to manage men before, through actual experience, they 
show a capacity to do so. Or if this is not wholly so, it is essen- 
tially so as to the poorer people who can not afford to be misled 
or to indulge in a speculation which involves the hazard of useful 
and therefore successful and happy lives. And it seems as though 
it does not stand in the way of one's ultimately gaining any position 
to which his capacity may be adapted. 

One who would well understand the German trades schools will 
not expect to get instruction from me, or in this way. The literature 
of the subject is coming to be available, and it will have to be 
studied by one who would be informed. A description here must 
necessarily be very superficial. Yet, enough may be said to arouse 
wider inquiry. The schools seem to extend to every possible vo- 
cation. It is clear that there is much flexibility, which results in 
the adaptation of schools to local industries. There may be scores 
or hundreds of them in a city, and they will be doing the kind of 
work demanded by the industries of the place and the thought of 
the , people. They are essentially shops, but the book knowledge 
needful to a general understanding of the work is not neglected. 
Still they are essentially shops, the buildings constructed like shops, 
and the equipment and atmosphere leaving no doubt about the 
purpose to train youth to earn a living with their hands. They are 
evidently sustained and guided by the allied trades, and do not 
seem to incur opposition because they may multiply workmen. It 
looks as though it is accepted that their number, extent, and output 
will, like the trades themselves, respond to the economic laws of 
demand and supply. Indeed, it is clear that while the town com- 
monly meets the expense, it is sometimes done by commercial bodies 
and trade organizations. Sometimes the state supplies the entire 
expense, but oftener it provides a subsidy equal to one half or one 
third of the cost. 

We must distinguish between the " continuation schools " and the 
"trades schools." The former do not confine their work to any 
single branch of trade or industry. They attempt to provide in- 
struction in fundamental industrial knowledge. Their main 
branches are German, arithmetic and drawing. They are essentially 
for youth who have been obliged to go to work, who have begun to 
feel the need of more teaching, and who have a general rather than 



29 

a specific aim in view. They are held largely in the evenings and 
on Sundays. The reading, the arithmetic, and the drawing are 
all adapted to industrial or commercial ends. In many cities con- 
tinuation schools are being changed into trades schools. There are 
continuation schools for girls as well as boys. These are necessarily 
more specific in work; they teach sewing, darning, mending, knit- 
ting, cooking, ironing, and other domestic arts. Religious instruc- 
tion is often, if not commonly, associated with them. Continuation 
schools seem very like the evening schools in our cities, with the 
difference perhaps that they seek competent artisans, rather than 
day school teachers, to instruct them, and this of course gives them 
the atmosphere and purposes of industrial schools to a much 
greater extent than is true of our evening schools. 

Attendance is commonly compulsory. In 1902 Prussia had 1684 
continuation schools with more than 200,000 pupils. Bavaria had 
274 such schools. Saxony 44, Wurtemburg 251, and Baden 170. 
It must be remembered that these are the lowest grade of schools 
with very distinct industrial ends. They follow immediately after 
the common and universal primary schools. But they do not 
always teach a particular trade. 

The trades schools are distinguished from the continuation schools 
in that they do teach definite trades. They are of all grades and 
kinds, from the school that teaches simple joinery to the one that 
provides the most exact instruction in the making of china or the 
weaving of fabrics. The curricula of these schools of course de- 
pend upon the end in view. The Germans have much of what we 
have but little, namely, the " capacity for taking pains." They train 
for exact and definite workmanship in their trades schools. And 
they do not neglect the bookish side of it either. They apparently 
realize, as we do not, the need of keeping one's head and hands in 
equipoise. One may be an ordinary workman in a simple trade, 
with but a simple knowledge of what is in the books, but one can 
not become an expert and reliable craftsman in an intricate trade 
without a head which contains a very good understanding of the 
history, philosophy, extent, accomplishments, and ambitions of the 
trade. And one who has that is likely to have a great deal more, 
and to be a balanced and influential citizen. 

The relations between the separate trades and the corresponding 
trades schools are close. That is important, indeed, it is imperative. 
It may as well be said at once that organized labor in America must 
aid in the upbuilding of trades schools in this country, or we can 
not hope for very substantial results. We will recur to this sub- 



30 

ject at a more appropriate place. It is sufficient just now to point 
out that in Germany the trades schools draw upon the trades for 
sympathy and direction, and they give back to the trades in fresh 
and ambitious blood, in spirit and capacity, in the pleasure and 
enthusiasm of superior ability to develop intricate and fascinating 
work. // we can not do this, we may as well face the fact that 
Germany will in the end outrun America in industrial prepotency, 
and therefore in national productivity and power. 

The German industrial schools are established under all manner 
of auspices — by guilds, trade associations, towns, or individuals. 
Tuition is ordinarily charged, but it is small, and smaller for Ger- 
mans than for others. The state often encourages these schools 
with money, and always with word of mouth and guidance. The 
Emperor embraces frequent opportunities to stimulate them. The 
Court has to follow the Emperor — the present Emperor anyway. 
The nation is thoroughly convinced that money spent in trade in- 
struction is well expended. As a result schools have sprung up in 
great numbers everywhere, but they are flexible enough to adapt 
themselves to the business interests of every locality. 

Here is a partial list of the kinds of schools in operation : artistic 
darners, artificial flower makers, toy makers, bakers, barbers, basket 
makers, blacksmiths, braziers, bookbinders, cabinet makers, carvers, 
cooks, carpenters, confectioners, dressmakers, dyers, embroiderers 
(hand and machine), engravers, gardeners, glaziers, goldsmiths, 
horseshoers, knitters, lace makers, leather workers, locksmiths, 
masons, milliners, paper hangers, painters, photographers, potters, 
printers, rug makers, saddlers, spinners, stonecutters, tinsmiths, 
tailors, trunk makers, watch makers, wagon makers, wheelwrights. 

In Germany the idea that woman's sphere is home-making has 
not been much broken in upon, and accordingly the trades schools 
for women, of which there are many, relate to the domestic arts 
about which women are specially concerned. This has all developed 
in the last thirty years, and largely in the last fifteen years. It 
has grown out of the international expositions. It has proceeded 
not only from the sagacity of German statesmanship, but from 
the quick and decisive influence of imperial sagacity and power upon 
German life. Doubtless there are some in America yet who are 
opposed to it on that account ; who are opposed to everything, good 
or bad, which flows from the doings of a monarchial government, 
no matter how constitutional it may be ; but surely the time has 
come when the controlling judgment of this country will not be so 
foolish as to refuse to adopt or adapt whatever in foreign policy 
may seem good for American life. 



31 

There has been, and there is yet to some extent, a very unfortu- 
nate sentiment in America that efficiency and aggressiveness in gov- 
ernment is, of itself, monarchial, and therefore undemocratic and 
Un-American; but the better thinking of the country is coming to 
reahze that while the general opinion of the country must deter- 
mine its policies, still an officer of the state may commend and 
recommend policies ; and that when policies receive the sanction 
of common sentiment, and then of law, an officer of our democratic 
government is expected to carry them out just as forcefully and 
completely as the officers of a monarchial government would do. 

What the Germans say of us 

Germany sent an educational commission to the St Louis Exposi- 
tion in 1904 with instructions to study the school exhibits at the 
exposition and quietly investigate the educational system of this 
country, and then report with particular reference to the bearing 
of the educational systems of their country and ours upon German 
and American industry and trade. The commission pursued its 
work very quietly. It did not seek the lime light; it did not pro- 
claim its route of march by the use of a military band ; it circled the 
educational conventions ; it did not have itself invited to dinners 
and make speeches at us ; in some way it even escaped the alert and 
aggressive attentions of the press. The commission's report may be 
alike interesting to German and American readers, but it is not 
altogether satisfactory to American complacency. 

It declared that America is abundant in resources, filled with 
energy, exceedingly quickwitted and resourceful ; that a vigorous 
people is possessed of such mighty and largely undeveloped physi- 
cal resources, and has such splendid advantage in coast lines and 
commercial situation, that undoubtedly it will have to be reckoned 
with in the trade and commerce of the somewhat distant future ; 
but that the United States is so seriously handicapped with mani- 
fest disadvantages, of which Americans are unconscious, that no 
American industrial competition at any early day need be taken 
seriously by the German nation. They said these disadvantages 
make a buoyant confidence without sufficient underpinning for it, 
a " feeling of complacent satisfaction with everything American," 
an expectation that, without much planning, and without much 
philosophical study, or concerted action, or definite plan, or co- 
operative efficiency, everything will come out all right whenever the 
need of it arises. They emphasized the entire absence of provision 
for public schools supplying systematic instruction in craftsmanship. 



32 

and asserted that this lack is sufficient to overcome any natural 
advantage in resources or geographical situation. This commission 
was not constituted exclusively of teachers, but of teachers, mer- 
chants, manufacturers, economists, publicists, and constructionists. 
They were thinking much of German trade and they advised their 
people not to be disturbed about any American interference with 
it at an early day. 

That is certainly enough to make the children of our "Uncle 
Samuel " sit bolt upright and look all around the horizon. Our 
ideals are not those of Germany. We are not primarily concerned 
about breaking down German trade. We have nothing but good 
will towards our flaxen-haired and interesting German cousins. We 
are not apprehensive about the physical strength, or, in other words, 
the war power, of our nation; and we are not going to bend our 
educational and industrial policies very exclusively to that end. 
All of that will take care of itself, notwithstanding the self-satis- 
faction and complacency which the German commission saw clearly 
and reported correctly. But we are concerned that every American 
child shall have his or her chance ; that that chance shall be at least 
as good and great as the chance of any child in any nation upon 
the earth; and that there shall be nothing in the policies of the 
country to mislead any child about his chance. We do believe that 
the greatness of this nation, the political attributes of its citizen- 
ship, and the measure of its influence upon the thought of other 
nations and upon the good of mankind, depend upon making all 
that can be made of every son and daughter of the Republic; and 
we do know that the physical and moral strength of men and women 
depend upon their having and loving work, and that their having 
and loving work depend upon their being able to do it well, more 
than upon any other factor in human life. 

Resources and accomplishments 

The President of the United States has just called a national 
conference of the governors, members of Congress, and other pub- 
lic men of all the states, to meet in Washington in May next to 
initiate general measures for conserving the nation's resources. The 
movement is none too early. A rational people may make much 
of slender material resources. Doubtless the lack of territory, of 
fertility, of woods, and mines, and animal life, are factors in the 
intellectual development, the moral fiber, the balance and steadiness 
of a people. Very likely the boundless material resources of the 
United States have contributed to our self-complacency, to our in- 



33 

difference, to the confidence that whatever situation we get into, 
we will get out of it when we must. Of course, the very richness 
of the land, in the hands of a people who lack nothing in physical 
strength and whose wits seldom go limping, has made it quite pos- 
sible for the nation to prosper and advance without exact indus- 
trial training, and even without making the most of everything 
we have. Certain it is that we have been almost as prodigal of 
our resources as of the time and future of our children. It is a 
strain upon the character of a nation, as of an individual, to have 
a superabundance of the world's goods. We waste more than would 
sustain the same number of people in any other country in the world. 
It has already impressed its influence upon the qualities of the na- 
tion, and one of its most decisive results appears in the fact that, 
while we are trying to do more diff'erent things without definite 
aims in education than other nations are doing, or than our own 
fathers did, we are really doing much less than other nations are 
doing, or than our fathers did, to make the most of our possessions 
and of ourselves through the training of our children for care, skill, 
and assiduity in the labor of the hand. And it goes without saying 
that, as more and more people live in our territory, as the land 
is more and more used and exhausted, and particularly as the more 
general and exact industrial training in other lands turns, as it is 
turning, the balance of trade against us, a decisive new departure 
must be taken, both in the production and economic use of ma- 
terials, and in the extent and competency of our labor, if we are not 
to let the steadily growing rivalries in the commerce of the world 
force us to a lower place in the world than the one which rightfully 
belongs to us. 

The United States Census Bureau has given me a statement of 
the exports in domestic manufactures from Germany and from 
this country in the same years, beginning with 1880. It is as 
follows : 

from the united states from germany 

1880. .$102 856 000 Si 52 967 000 

1890. .$151 102 000 $381 612 000 

1897. .^^yy 285 000 $569 640 000 

1900. .$433 852 000 $715 'j'jd 000 

1906. .$686 023 000 .$1 079 520 000 

The point of these figures is that the ratios of increase are not 
so very far apart, notwithstanding the fact that Germany is an 
old, densely populated country, whose economic conditions have not 



34 

much changed in thirty years, while the United States has marvel- 
ously expanded in all of the factors of industrial productivity, un- 
less it be in craftsmanship, in that time. In other words, it looks 
as though the Germans had completely met our natural advantages 
in resources, machinery, and markets, by multiplying the number 
of their skilled workmen, and adding to the kinds of manufactured 
products which find world markets. This ought to be suggestive 
to a people who are quite conscious of their industrial and business 
wits. It is doubtless true that neither wits, abundance of materials, 
machinery, waterpower, coal, artificial protection through tariffs, 
nor engineering schools, without a schooling and a manner of life 
which seeks to make every individual man or woman a producer of 
something worth having, can long save us in competition with a 
country which, regardless of its philosophy and aims, uses the com- 
mon power to make the most of the labor of every child of the 
Empire. 

Shall we have public trades schools ? 

The American public has really done nothing about training the 
children of the wage earners in industrial vocations. We per- 
mitted the very name " industrial school " to become used almost 
exclusively by institutions of a penal or disciplinary character. The 
manual training schools are not vocational schools. They relate to 
general intelligence or culture, or else to the highly technical or 
semiprofessional vocations, for which the children of the masses 
are not fitted, as a rule, by inheritance, environment, or the influ- 
ences of the home. A number of very excellent trades schools have 
been established by benevolent citizens, but, while some of these 
have been measurably successful, Americans do not take very enthu- 
siastically to institutions which in whole or in part rest upon char- 
ity. The people are too much accustomed to the sense of pro- 
prietorship in the public school system to become very ardent over 
an institution which is not public enough to be dedicated to the 
common interests without conditions or reservations. To be ac- 
ceptable to the public, it must in a sense belong to the public, and 
be managed by public officers as a trust, for the advantage of all 
alike. 

Doubtless the American schools which come as near as any to the 
trades schools of Europe, are those which have been established by 
a few of the great manufacturing works to train workmen for their 
shops. No one can justly criticize these from the standpoint of the 
manufacturing employers. It is their own matter: they not only 



35 

have the right, but are to be commended for doing it : people may 
use what they offer, or let it alone. In the absence of some general 
system of trades schools they are clearly warranted in doing, doubt- 
less find it necessary to do, what they can to prepare boys for their 
own service. The movement only exemplifies the dearth of indus- 
trial training in the country, however, and relieves it only at a few 
points and in an altogether inadequate measure. It is unacceptable 
to the labor organizations, because they think that such schools are 
created and operated in the particular interest of the employer, and 
not in the general interest of the employee, and more particularly 
because they think such schools provide ways for defeating the aims 
and methods of organized labor. 

From the viewpoint of general educational policy, the labor or- 
ganizations have the better of the contention. Such schools are 
unquestionably within the rights of the large employer. He can 
not be expected to organize and operate a school upon a basis and 
with the ends of a public school, or a school in which all, or all 
of a general class, have equal rights. Certainly he does not, and 
quite as certainly the school which he operates can not, meet the 
educational and industrial, and therefore the moral and material, 
needs of the country in any appreciable degree. We must find a 
scheme which will involve public proprietorship, and be managed 
in the interest of all the people, or at least all who may have com- 
mon interests in any trade, before it will become an effective 
American institution. 

Can we develop such a plan of procedure which will meet with 
the cooperation of employer and employee, of the capitalist and of 
organized labor? It is a vital question. I have confidence that we 
can. Capital may be expected to oppose in some measure any ex- 
tension of the public school system involving a very substantial in- 
crease in cost, but capital can not withstand the justice of the 
demand that, if there is any way of doing it, the public shall supply 
to the children of the wage earners something equivalent to the 
literary and professional instruction provided for the children of the 
better-to-do classes in the high schools and colleges. Nor can 
capital withstand any movement looking to the training of work- 
men, to the recognition of competency and industry, and to the 
moral and material advantage of American workmen. 

I have no right to speak for organized labor, but what I have 
known of American workmen and what I have recently read from 
many of their authorized leaders, combine to make me believe 
that they would not be so fatuous as to deny the utmost of oppor- 



36 

tunity to their own children only because there would be more and 
better trained workmen, if they could have confidence that what 
was to be done would be free from selfish exploitation, rest upon a 
truly educational footing, and be guided by the common advantage 
of all of the interests concerned. 

And since writing the foregoing I have learned that the whole 
subject is under careful consideration by the authorities of the 
American Federation of Labor, with a manifest purpose to de- 
termine the attitude which the labor organizations ought to take 
concerning it. The labor leaders often speak of their apprehension 
about schools assuming to turn out finished craftsmen and thereby 
making a " short cut to workmanship," and place their skepticism 
about industrial schools of all kinds upon that ground. There 
ought to be no apprehension on that account. There is a universal 
and imperative law which regulates the acquisitions and demands 
of craftsmanship. The higher technical schools and trades schools 
can not expect to turn out finished craftsmen any more than the 
law schools and medical schools can expect to train finished lawyers 
and physicians. But they can train boys and girls so that they 
will have the possibility of becoming finished craftsmen, just as 
the law schools train young men so that they may become strong 
lawyers and the medical schools train boys up to the possibilities 
of becoming scientific and skillful physicians and surgeons. And 
it has come to be as apparent that craftsmanship is dependent upon 
technical and trades schools as that learned professions are de- 
pendent upon professional schools. And if craftsmanship is 
dependent upon such schools, then the children of craftsmen 
are dependent, and all of the higher interests of the country are 
dependent upon the schools. 

The American Federation of Labor, at the recent meeting in 
November, refused to commit itself to an attitude of antagonism 
to technical and trades schools, and directed its executive council 
to examine "established and proposed industrial school systems so 
that it may be in a position to inform the American Federation of 
Labor what, in the council's opinion, would be the wisest course 
for organized labor to pursue in connection therewith." 

There can in the end be but one outcome, and I have entire 
confidence that the wisdom of the labor organizations will lead 
them to an attitude which is at once sane, patriotic, and promotive 
of the best good to the children of the masses. 

We have now seen how very slight are the relations of our 
schools to our industries; we have looked into the relations which 



37 

other peoples have estabHshed between their school? and their indus- 
tries; and we are up to the question whether we shall train the 
children of our wage earning masses for the crafts and other vo- 
cational employments and for the household and womanly arts ; in 
a word, whether we shall have trades schools, and if so, upon what 
sort of a plan. 

It seems to me that the moral argument for the advance is 
irresistible. There can be no room for doubt about the moral obli- 
gation of the people to do as much for the children who can best 
work with their hands, as for those who go to the high schools and 
engage in professional, commercial, and managing vocations. 

The higher institutions have nothing to fear 

The experience of Germany shows that the higher institutions 
would have nothing to lose, but much to gain, from the development 
of vocational schools. When the Emperor, notwithstanding all that 
had then been done to develop mono-technic schools, admonished his 
people that they were still turning out too many " intellectuals " 
and too few " industrials," he was aiding the universities, and 
particularly the higher technical schools, quite as much as the trades 
schools. It is ordinarily so in education. An advance at any point 
makes for an advance at all points where there ought to be an 
advance. Thirty years ago there were only 17,500 university stud- 
ents in Germany. Ten years ago the number had increased to 
30,000, a growth of less than fifty per cent in twenty years. Now 
there are 45,000, an advance of more than fifty per cent in ten years. 
Naturally the largest increase is in the higher technical institutions. 
The number of these was 4000 in 1891, 13,000 in 1903, and 20,000 
now. But the higher literary, scientific, and technological institu- 
tions, the institutions leading to professional and managing employ- 
ments, are all overcrowded, though not more so than the professions 
to which they lead. So, I repeat, we need have no fear of injuring 
the higher schools or the higher institutions which train for pro- 
fessionalism or for idle culture, by training our masses for indus- 
trialism. 

Have no fear for the future of the higher learning in the United 
States. Its only danger is in the inadequacy of the elementary and 
fundamental training. Our people of means and culture like the 
higher things of life too well to leave any room for doubt. The 
university, the college, the professional and technical school, are 
as well established in America as the rock at Plymouth. They are 
established in all parts of the country. The advance of the university 
is quite as marked in the newer parts of the country as in the older. 
Best of all, an American type of university is coming out of it all, 



38 

and happily it is able to see that the application of scientific learning 
to the vocations of living people means more to the world, and 
does more for itself, than the exclusive study of the ages gone, 
for the mere discipline and the culture there is in it. And happily 
too, this is making for the kind of elementary training that is vital 
to the progress of education and the unfolding of a nation's life 
in necessary equilibrium. 

The spirit and enthusiasm of the American temperament are to 
be reckoned with in the training of our youth. Yes, in the training 
of our people from the beginning to the end. There need be no 
fear of any lack of generals. If we train and guide the crowd, the 
leadership will then take care of itself. If we undertake to favor, 
only or mainly, the materials of which leaders are made, we are 
likely to be fooled about it — for it is generally the unexpected that 
happens in the matter of leadership; and we then surely withhold 
from the masses what is their and the country's due. All experi- 
ence shows that the real captains in all lines of human activity have 
come out of the crowd that worked with their hands. The love and 
the capacity for drudging work are the fundamental basis of leader- 
ship in all employments, whether of the head or hand, and any 
educational system which fails to recognize the fact, which does not 
honor the blouse shirt and the clean smut of honest labor, is at 
once misleading the innocents and moving directly towards the de- 
feat of its own ends. 

Two state movements 

It would be unjust to make no reference to distinct efforts in two 
states — Massachusetts and Wisconsin — to meet the situation. In 
Massachusetts a commission appointed by the Governor, pursuant 
to an act of the Legislature, in 1905 studied the matter and reported 
in favor of the creation of a permanent commission whose duty 
it should be to promote discussion of the matter and effect the 
organization of trades schools in the towns of the state. Such 
permanent commission was provided for and appointed in 1906. 
Prof. Paul H. Hanus of the Education Department at Harvard 
University is the president. The state provides rather liberal aid 
for such industrial schools as may be established under the auspices 
of the commission. The reports of the two Massachusetts com- 
missions are substantial contributions to the literature of the subject. 
The movement shows much careful thinking and some caution about 
doing. It seems to me that a serious mistake is made in committing 
the organization and administration of industrial schools to a special 
commission and not to the public school authorities of the state and 
the subdivisions thereof ; and it seems to me also that the commission 



39 

falls into fundamental error in looking to the founding of higher 
technical schools, teaching no one trade, to the exclusion of voca- 
tional trades schools, if it is intended to meet the situation which 
seems to me most urgent and most dependent upon public direction 
and support. But that is obviously because of the prevalent indus- 
trial situation in Massachusetts. 

The Wisconsin movement is evidently intended to deal more 
exactly with the situation we have been discussing. The last Legis- 
lature in Wisconsin added nine sections to the school law authoriz- 
ing cities, or school districts embracing a city, to establish and 
maintain schools " for the purpose of giving practical instruction 
in the useful trades to persons having attained the age of sixteen 
years, as a part of the public school system of the city," placing 
such trades schools under the supervision of the school boards, and 
empowering the school boards to provide buildings and equipment, 
and employ teachers, and " give practical instruction in one or more 
of the common trades." Each trades school must have, however, 
an enrollment of at least thirty pupils. An important, and un- 
doubtedly a salutary provision of the law, is that the school board 
shall appoint an advisory committee of practical craftsmen to co- 
operate in laying out and carrying on the work of the trades schools. 
The scheme is to be supported by levying a tax, not exceeding 
one half of one mill, upon the assessed valuation of the city, the 
proceeds of which can not be used for any other purpose. The 
school board is authorized to act upon its own initiative unless 
twenty per cent of the electors file a protest against the proposi- 
tion after notice has been given, in which case the question must 
be submitted to an election of all the voters, and the majority must 
rule. Here, too, are some details which we would have to 
debate, but on the whole, the plan seems to meet the situation very 
well indeed. It is certainly filled with very great possibilities. 

In each of these states the movement grew out of keen popular 
interest in the subject. The manufacturing conditions in Massa- 
chusetts make the training of operatives very urgent for both the 
people and the industries of the state. In the Wisconsin cities, 
particularly in Milwaukee, the teaching of particular trades has been 
strongly urged. A " School of Trades " was opened under private 
auspices in Milwaukee in January 1906. It seems to have met a 
manifest need very successfully. The feeling grew quickly that it 
should be a part of the public school system of the city, and there- 
fore Milwaukee influences which were interested in this school pro- 
cured the enactment of the law. Since then the " School of Trades " 
has become a part of the Milwaukee public school system under this 



40 

law. The one half mill tax authorized by the statute yields more 
than $100,000 in Milwaukee. I am advised that as yet nothing more 
has been done in the state, but that is not significant, for the time 
has been short. It is also said that no schools have yet been organ- 
ized under the Massachusetts law, but that something in this direc- 
tion is under consideration in several cities. 

Such enactments in a state extend discussion and give opportunity 
to the thinking of the people. They are incapable of harm: if not 
desired, nothing results : if they will not work, they are ignored or 
modified : if they meet the needs of the situation, they break out the 
roads of progress. 

Something or nothing 

If the time has corrie and the conditions are ripe for the move- 
ment we have in mind, let us try to organize it upon a plan that 
will work, and in the working will produce continually enlarging 
results for all the children, all the schools, all of the industrial, and 
therefore all of the moral and intellectual, activities of the country. 
Nothing can come from a plan that fails to reckon with all of the 
interests concerned, that does not call to its support the aid of both 
employer and employee, or that is incapable of results amply com- 
mensurate with the labor and the cost. If we should have to com- 
promise logic, efficiency, coherency, and completeness out of it in 
order to avoid issues, either with capital or organized labor, let us 
assume that we are not yet ready, and, notwithstanding the con- 
tinuing and increasing disadvantages, let us wait until we are. 

To be successful, this movement must sustain organic relations 
with the public school system. It can not succeed unless it is to 
articulate with that system. To articulate with it, it must be under 
the same management. It must rest upon just as substantial a 
footing as the other parts of that system. It must appeal to the 
civic pride, the pedagogical sense, the practical experience, the 
democracy, and the enthusiasms of the country. Then it must have a 
share in the passion of the country for education, and it must be part 
and parcel of the system of common schools, which is enshrined in 
the hearts and the usage, the constitutions and the laws, of the land. 
It can not be shunted off to state commissions and local boards, 
which are out of legal relations, and possibly out of sympathetic 
relations, with the established educational organization of the people. 
To be resultful it must get from, and it must give to, the public 
schools. That, of course, means that there must be nothing about 
the movement which does not accord with the fundamental basis 
of the common schools, and it also means that there must be some 



41 

modifications in the present plan of the schools in order to give it a 
comfortable and useful place. I am not at all sure that that may 
not be done with quite as much advantage to our common intel- 
lectual education, as to our industries. 

To be successful, it must not make the mistake of ministering 
to the highly technical and highly organized industries, carried on in 
great factories, so much as to the mechanical trades which may 
appeal to the independence and satisfy the ambitions of the in- 
dividual. It must, of course, do what it may for the employees of 
the factories, but it must know that that will have to be very general, 
and will have to apply to general intelligence rather than technical 
efficiency, because the work which has to be done in a factory, which 
relates to a single feature of a complicated process, will have to be 
learned in the factory itself. The main point of the proposition 
must be the development of workmen rather than of professionals 
or managers, and the vital basis of it must be the inherent right of 
every American child to his chance to make the most of himself 
in the industrial, as well as the intellectual, life of the country. 

Only harm and humiliation can come from dodging issues with 
organized labor by declaring that we do not propose to teach any 
trades. There is not much else that we are not trying to do. I am 
for doing that ; or for making what little we can of our unsystematic 
system of night schools, and not pretending that we are doing 
anything very important. The better attitude is that our children 
are not learning trades, that it is vital that they shall, that it is their 
right, that it is necessary to the country, that the schools must teach 
them if they are taught, that the schools may now teach them better 
than the workmen, that the burden ought not to be left to the work- 
men, that the schools can not assume to train all children to be 
finished workmen any more than they can train all children to be 
finished physicians or engineers, but that the schools can bring most 
children up to the plane of trained beginners in all of the arts and 
crafts, with entire confidence that in time the greater part of them 
will be more efficient workmen and more intelligent, and therefore 
better, men and women, and that this will not menace, but will 
promote any legitimate or existent interest of organized labor. 
With confidence in the intelligence which determines the ultimate 
attitudes of the labor organizations, having entire sympathy with 
their purposes if not with all of their acts, we may meet them upon 
their own grounds and develop the details of a plan which ought to 
gain wide, if not universal, approval, because there is no ultimate 
and logical reason for dissent. But that can never come by avoid- 
ance, or through makeshift or compromise. 



42 

Recommendations 

Then my suggestions and my tentative plan may perhaps be 
stated as follows: 

1 Insist upon more complete and always up-to-date vital statistics. 
Know of the existence of every child, and when he is of school age 
have him accounted for. 

2 Require attendance at seven years of age, instead of eight, and 
let it continue, in elementary school or trades school, to seventeen, 
but excuse from attendance before eight, at the parents' request, on 
the ground of immaturity, and also excuse from attendance when- 
ever the work in the elementary school and trades school is com- 
pleted, or after fifteen if the child is regularly at work. 

3 Establish schools for teaching trade vocations, the work to 
begin at the end of the elementary school course, and continue for 
three years. 

4 Let the trades schools be open both in the day time and evening. 

5 Establish continuation schools, to be open mainly in the even- 
ings, where the work shall be of a general character, suited to the 
needs of youth who are employed through the day and are not 
doing the work in the trades schools. In other words, make our 
evening schools more general and better. Let the work in the con- 
tinuation schools go perhaps half way or more through the high 
school course, but with less formalism about it. 

6 Shorten the time in the elementary, schools to seven years. 
Take out what it is not vital for a child to know in order to learn 
or to do other things for himself. Assume that he will learn and 
do things on his own account if he has the power. Strive to give 
him power, and expect that through it he will get knowledge. Stop 
reasoning that mere information will give him power. Stop the 
dress parade and pretence about teaching, which consume time un- 
necessarily. Push the child along and aim to have him finish the 
elementary school in his fourteenth year. When he is fifteen send 
him to the trades school whether he has finished the elementary 
school or not. 

7 Assume that if the child does not go to the high school, his 
school work may end with his seventeenth, and not in his four- 
teenth, year. 

8 Put into the elementary schools, from the very beginning, some 
phase of industrial work. Up to the last year or two let it be work 
that can be done in the schoolroom, at the desks, under the ordinary 
teachers, and will occupy two or three hours a week. This might 
proceed from folding paper, molding sand, modeling clay, outlin- 



43 

ing with a needle, to the simple knife work in wood, plain sewing, 
knitting, and the like. In the last year or two send the classes to 
central rooms specially prepared, perhaps to the trades schools, for 
more complex wood work, cooking, etc. Always emphasize the 
drawing. 

9 As the child comes to the end of the elementary schools, expect 
him to elect whether he will go to the high school, to a trades school, 
or to work. 

10 Wherever he goes, expect that the schools will keep track of 
him until he is at least seventeen. If he goes to the trades school, 
expect him to get into the possession of the fundamental knowledge 
and something of the skill of a trade by his seventeenth or eigh- 
teenth year. If he goes to work in a store or factory, expect him 
to come to the continuation school till his seventeenth year is com- 
pleted. Have him and his parents understand that he is responsible 
to the schools until he is perhaps eighteen years old. 

11 Set up trades schools in spacious, but not necessarily ornate, 
buildings. Start the particular kind of trades schools that the busi- 
ness of the town and the interests of the trades call for. Let it be 
understood that wherever there are a sufficient number of children 
to learn a particular trade, there will be a school to teach it to them. 
Let the trades school partake more of the character of the shop than 
of the school. Hold to books, somewhat, particularly books which 
the pupils will be glad to read by themselves, carry mathematics 
a little farther, lay emphasis upon work with a pencil ; let the main 
part of the work be with the hands ; and let the atmosphere of the 
place be free and comfortable, so that young people will like it. Let 
the teaching be done by real artisans, who are intellectually balanced 
and can teach, rather than by teachers who can use tools only in- 
differently. Above all, have teachers who are not afraid of youth, 
and so are not under the necessity of brow-beating and badgering 
them a great deal, but rather who command respect because of 
what they are, and can lead the way to the pleasure of really doing 
things. 

12 Keep the trades schools open afternoons and evenings. Have 
their pupils attend from four or five hours to as many hours a 
week as the pupil can give. Let the training be individual and let 
the progress of the pupil depend upon himself and upon the time he 
can give ; but allow him to engage in other work for pay if he must. 

13 Modify the child labor laws so they will articulate with the 
plan, and enforce them. Require employers to regulate their affairs 
so that employees may attend continuation schools or a trades school 
at least four or five hours per week. 



44 

14 Let the trades schools be supported by the town, but give 
them sufficient state aid to encourage their organization and dis- 
pose them to conform to the needs of the situation. 

15 Meet any demand on behalf of girls as well as on behalf 
of boys. 

16 Make it quite possible for one in a trades school to go to a 
manual training high school, and vice versa, but be careful to avoid 
the inference that one is to prepare for another. Let it be under- 
stood that each stands upon its own footing and leads to very 
different ends. 

Higher technical schools 

Coming to a conclusion, it occurs to me that my desire to empha- 
size the need of mono-technic or trades schools for boys and girls 
who are not to work in stores, offices, or factories, but should be 
prepared for independent work, dependent upon their individuality 
and their own hands, may have led me to seem to be indifferent 
to the interests of the higher technical schools and of the industries 
which depend upon the cooperation of many workmen and the use 
of machinery. 

I would not have it so. Of course, much of our industrial pro- 
ductiyity, and therefore much of our manhood and womanhood, 
is to depend upon the conditions in the large factories ; or, in other 
words, upon the relations of the man and the machine. The ten- 
dency of the machine is to make one man's labor as good as another 
man's. That tendency can be met and overcome only through 
education and individuality. And it must be overcome or we shall 
produce only vast quantities of coarse and low-priced goods, when 
our commercial success depends upon our ability to turn out fine 
and high-priced goods. We are not meeting the tendency as we 
ought. Perhaps it is but just to ourselves to say that this is essen- 
tially the land of invention and of machinery, and that we have 
more to do to keep the operative ahead of the machine, than other 
countries have. Then we must do more. Beautiful china and fine 
fabrics are dependent upon it, and we are not abreast of Britain, 
or France, or Germany, or even of China or Japan, in fine pottery 
or fine weaving. And there is more than the fineness and the quality 
of products at stake : the fineness, and the character, and the happi- 
ness, of men and women are at stake. It all depends, in the last 
analysis, upon the general education and the special training of 
operators and operatives alike. And that must be done in the ele- 
mentary and secondary schools, in special technical schools, and in 
the factories themselves. It can not come through royal decree. 
It must come through the favor and the pressure of the gradually 



45 

unfolding public opinion of the country. But it can never come if 
we persist in the hallucination that we are possessed of the world's 
knowledge and proficiency already. Instead of being indifferent to 
the manual training schools or the high-grade pluri-technic schools, 
I think they are our main instrumentalities for making us aware of 
our industrial deficiencies, and for pointing our industrial masses 
to the marvelous value of art sense, of the natural sciences, of 
economics, of manual skill, of ambition and assiduity, of intellectual 
progress, and of character, in workmanship and in life. 

But all said and done, the higher technical school is already upon 
its feet at the points where most needed. The necessities of capital 
promote it and the favor of fashion is lavished upon it. And the 
need of the trades school, or the appreciation of the basis upon 
which it can thrive, or the obligations of the common life to it, are 
as yet nowhere accepted in America; and therefore it claims the 
most emphasis. 

Agricultural education 

There is no less need of the applications of general knowledge 
and special skill to the agricultural than to the mechanical indus- 
tries. But agricultural training rests upon a wholly different footing 
and must be promoted by wholly different methods from those 
which must be used to extend and uplift industrial craftsmanship. 
At an early day I hope to discuss the basis and the methods of a 
definite training in the proficiency which will enable people who live 
on the farms to get the most for rational life out of their lands. 
It is spoken of now only to show that it is not forgotten. 

Conclusion 

We have exploited the fundamental principles of our democracy 
in our politics and in our religion much more completely and satis- 
factorily than in our education or in our industries. The application 
of those principles to our training and our work of hand is now to be 
pressed to conclusions. 

It is a matter of great moment to the country and to what the 
country stands for in the world; and it is a matter of preeminent 
concern to the State which has the largest population and is first in 
finance and in publication, as well as first in the commercial and 
manufacturing activities of the Union. 

The people of the State have the power in their hands. They have 
millions of boys and girls to raise aright. Nothing is clearer than 
that results turn upon the training. They have business to promote. 
The outcome is determined by the course that is taken. Our 
children and our work are interdependent. One interest must help 



46 

the other if we would grow in the elements which make a com- 
monwealth great. It is becoming more and more obvious every 
day that, whether we would wish it so or not, a steadily increasing 
weight of responsibility must rest upon the schools. 

The usefulness of our society to the individual depends upon the 
character and the efficiency of the units who comprise the mass. 

jThe worth of the individual to the state, on the other hand, de- 
pends upon the common acceptance of the principles of the Golden 
Rule, as well as upon the ambitions which are inspired by the com- 
mon thinking and the prevalent anxiety and aptitude of the people 
for work. 

Whether the work be intellectual or manual has nothing to do 
with the right of the toiler to respect and regard. 

Individual success and the growing strength of a people must 
come, if it comes at all, through steady application by growing 
numbers, through increasing competency, through sound living, and 
through the slow accretions of goods and of esteem. 

It would be an appalling and pathetic mistake for a people to 
think that subtlety and greed can become the basis of either per- 
sonal or national prosperity. 

If it seems an unnecessary and rather repellant preachment to 
reiterate these truisms here, let me remind you that immoral ex- 
ploitation, the illegitimate use of the common power, and the ab- 
normal fortunes which have resulted from overreaching, which has 
found its opportunity in the lack of legal restraint and the abund- 
ance of abnormal conditions, have raised serious doubts in the 
minds of multitudes as to whether they are truisms or not. 

Economic conditions have forced combinations. The disappear- 
ance of individual responsibility in the corporation and the labor 
union, has wrought havoc with old-fashioned thinking and with 
moral fiber. 

The time must soon come when the man in the corporation shall 
be stopped from using the common power of the people to oppress 
rather than to aid the people, and when the man in the union shall 
be stopped from using the organized strength of his fellows to do 
the least he can for his wage, and from debasing himself through 
subtle antagonism to the people for whom he works, or a heavy 
shadow will rest upon the pathway of the Republic. 

It is to be accomplished by the logical evolution and application 
of law, and by a system of education which offers equivalent op- 
portunities to all people and to all industries. 

It is to come through the stern refusal of special privilege and 
the ready recognition of the right of special profits for special 



47 

assiduity, special thrift, special skill, special ingenuity, or special 
risks, on equal terms to all. 

It will come through the ample protection and encouragement 
of the corporation or labor union in all legitimate operations, and 
in the complete rejection of all propositions which impinge upon the 
fundamental rights of men or are prejudicial to the interests w^hich 
are common to us all. 

The corporations are being taught rather strenuous lessons just 
now. There is some danger that the new found fact that the process 
is good politics may carry it too far. The officer who misbehaves 
deserves the punishment more than the corporation. 

The man in the union, and all the rest of us, both in this gen- 
eration and the next, must be aided more completely by the schools, 
and to do that some radical changes in the basis, the thought, and 
the plan of the schools seems imperative. 

The child must have his chance, — an equal, open, hopeful, chance. 
But he must not be misled. His chance is in work. It is in his be- 
coming accustomed to discipline, to direction, to industry, and to 
persistence, before he is sixteen years of age. 

The chance is lessening rather than enlarging through too much 
sentimentality in the schools. I do not think our young people are 
more immoral, — I think they are more moral, than the young people 
of the last generation, or the one before that, were, but I think they 
are distinctly more irresponsible, falsely polite on occasions, and dis- 
tinctly impolite and often impertinent the rest of the time, than their 
predecessors were ; that they have more information and less power ; 
and that it is due to the weakening control of the home, and to 
pedagogical philosophies which are either fallacious or are unwisely 
applied, as well as to work which is undesirable or too much at- 
tenuated, in the schools. Let us resume some old-fashioned notions 
about work, about the child as well as the teacher doing his part of 
the work, and about the direction and the control of children. 

Even though we regret the fact, I am confident that the chance 
of the American child depends upon the school supplying oppor- 
tunities for his physical, as well as his intellectual, faculties, which 
were formerly supplied outside of the schools. He must have a 
wider range of things to do, he must be allowed to choose when 
he can; and he must then be required to do what he undertakes. 

His training must be more exact and definite. He must be 
trained in a vocation and taught that he must uplift his craft and 
help his craftsmen, while he allows no one less worthy than himself 
to rob him of the benefits of his individual skill, or of his funda- 
mental right to use it in the way which will bring him the most 



029 965 169 1 

48 



advantage. He must be distinctly told that he can not have the 
profit which belongs to other men through their knowledge, skill, 
and thrift; that shiftlessness can bear none but bitter fruit; and that 
there is no probable chance and nothing in the thought of his 
country which will make it otherwise. 

Our schools can not long continue to give an advantage to a 
minority, nor to give more aid to the intellectual than the industrial 
interests in our life. 

The schools will have to keep the teaching even with the child's 
age; will have to adapt the teacher to the sex, circumstances, and 
purposes of the child; will have to meet the demands of every 
kind and grade of industry; and will have to continue their over- 
sight and aid until habits are somewhat established, and the ability 
to perform a definite work is reasonably assured. 

If, coincident with all this, capital is encouraged to venture and 
provide work for loyal and capable workers ; if the dividends be 
but a just return for the investment and the risk, and the wage be 
gauged by the character of the service, and the skill and reliability 
of the worker; if employers will concern themselves about the 
safety, comforts, and general welfare of employees, and if em- 
ployees will appreciate the risks and responsibilities of management, 
and study the interests of employers; if the work of the day is kept 
within reasonable hours or specially compensated; if there are 
public facilities for self -improvement when the work of the day is 
over; if there is combined effort to make the homes as good as may 
be; if children are not allowed to work when they should be in 
school ; if women are not permitted to labor when and where they 
should not; and if men who can work are made to work or allowed 
to want; if amusements can be made decent, healthful, and at 
moderate cost ; if drink can be held in check, and politics be told to 
go hence; then wealth, and health, and happiness will abound in 
the land. 

Let us bring about as much of it as we can for our State. To 
that end let us not be afraid of new plans. Let us not think that 
the trend of events ought not to be. Even though we depart from 
the thought and the practice of the past, let us work out the founda- 
tion principles of our democracy in our education, and let us make 
our knowledge and our training potent in our industries. And let 
us make our industries contribute not only to our wealth and to our 
strength but to our manhood as well. Then we shall assure the free 
American chance to every one, and we shall give a new interpreta- 
tion and a new power to the essential factors of our common life. 



Conservation Resources 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



029 965 169 1 



